A Mystery in the Middle East (Did Israel Really Find Saddam's WMD's & Bomb A Nuclear Reactor?)

Stratfor ^ | April 8, 2008 | 1807 GMT | George Friedman

[fight_truth_decay]

The Arab-Israeli region of the Middle East is filled with rumors of war. That is about as unusual as the rising of the sun, so normally it would not be worth mentioning. But like the proverbial broken clock that is right twice a day, such rumors occasionally will be true. In this case, we don’t know that they are true, and certainly it’s not the rumors that are driving us. But other things — minor and readily explicable individually — have drawn our attention to the possibility that something is happening.

SNIP

Rumors now are swirling that the Israelis are about to reveal publicly they bombed a nuclear reactor provided to Syria by North Korea. But this news isn’t all that big. Also rumored is that the Israelis will claim Iranian complicity in building the reactor. One Israeli TV station reported April 8 that Israel really had discovered Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which it said had been smuggled to Syria.

Why the Bush administration wouldn’t have trumpeted news of the Syrian reactor worldwide in September 2007 is beyond us, but there obviously were some reasons — assuming the TV report is true, which we have no way of establishing. In fact, we have no idea why the Israelis are choosing this moment to rehash the bombing of this site.... More

[tatown]

If W could have kept his favorability north of 50%, it would have had a huge effect on both the mid-terms and our nominee for 2008.

[bert]

.....I’ve never understood W’s resistance to fighting back....

What evidence do you have that he is not fighting back? You really don’t know what he is doing.

Like Roosevelt, he is not saying anything except precisely what he wants to be known.

Rather than weakness, it is strength

[bert]

That is the correct answer. Quaddify was Saddam’s nuclear subcontractor.

[muawiyah]

Gee whiz, what were we doing in F.Y.R. ~ protecting the Ustashi, of course ~ gotta' be something more to it than that doesn't there.

One interesting thesis was that our sole ambition was to chase Mig 29s out of F.Y.R. (even though at the time the Russians and the Serb head of state could have been bought off much cheaper).

Could be it was just a stupid move.

[444Flyer]

Thanks C from E.:)

[fightinJAG]

Could be, but I doubt it.

[tatown]

Okay bert if you think an approval rating in the low 30’s demonstrates “strength” then we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

~Cheers